Will Last Year's Union Organizing Wins Grow the Labor Movement?

One of the most exciting developments we saw in 2022 was an energetic wave win workplace organizing. Tight labor markets combined with pent up frustration over corporate profiteering during the COVID-19 pandemic and wages that weren’t keeping pace with inflation to create a perfect storm for workers rising up to improve their workplaces.

According to data from the NLRB, in 2022 more than 58,000 workers won union representation in at least 807 elections. That’s an increase of 93% in workers winning union elections over the year before. Notably, that number does not include at least one high profile win, which has not yet been certified by the NLRB - the groundbreaking Amazon Labor Union victory at the company’s JFK8 fulfillment center in Staten Island.

This increase in unionization activity and win rate is certainly promising, but the big question for 2023 is whether or not those union election wins will result in increased union membership. That’s because winning the election is only half of the battle.

The Long Road to a First Contract

The process for winning a union election is relatively straightforward. Workers petition the NLRB to hold an election; the government holds an election and if more workers vote for the union than against the union, workers win the union.

Straightforward, but incredibly difficult.

Bosses have almost unfettered access to workers throughout the entire process (because the campaign landscape essentially the employer’s workplace), many bring in high priced union avoidance lawyers and consultants, and it is not uncommon for employers to make promises, threaten workers, use intimidation tactics, and engage in aggressive surveillance to dissuade workers from joining the union.

But at this phase, it’s really up to the workers. If workers can hold it together through the boss’s campaign of intimidation, and more workers vote for the union than against the union, then the union wins.

That’s where it gets really hard. To actually gain many of the material benefits of union membership, workers need to bargain a first union contract with management. That means at this phase, rather than organizing their coworkers to vote yes for the union, workers need to force the boss to actually agree to a contract.

That can be hard, because there is very little in the legal framework surrounding collective bargaining that requires employers to agree to anything. Employers have an obligation to bargain in good faith. But that generally means agreeing to periodically come to negotiations, listening to the other side, and sometimes providing information. They are under no obligation to agree to any of their workers proposals, no matter how reasonable.

Even when things go well and workers eventually win a contract, it takes a long time. Bloomberg Law reports that it takes an average of 409 days between when workers win their union election and when they reach their first contract.

And that’s when things go well. In around 30% of elections, workers are never able to win a first contract.

Looking back at the major election victories in 2022, workers involved in many of the largest union victories are still fighting for their first contracts. Grad students at MIT won their election on April 6th, 2022 but as of the latest update from the union bargaining committee they were still making slow progress at the bargaining table. Interns and Residents at Stanford Health Care in Palo Alto won their election in May but didn’t even get to the bargaining table until November 17th.

Starbucks and Amazon Workers Face a Long Road to a First Contract

Some of the most inspiring union organizing victories of 2022 were the Amazon Labor Union’s breakthrough victory at JFK8 in Staten Island and the Starbucks Workers United/Workers United campaign at Starbucks. But both of these new unions face a long road to winning their first contracts.

In a lot of ways, the reason these workers will have such a hard time winning their first contracts is the same thing that makes their organizing victories so exciting. Both are breaking new ground with their employers because neither company has a history of collective bargaining.

At Amazon, bosses rightly worry that bargaining a first contract with the ALU in Staten Island will open the floodgates to worker organizing across the country. If they bargain a contract and show workers that unionizing can lead to real improvements, workers at Amazon facilities around the country will start knocking down the ALU’s doors looking to get in on the action. But if management is able to stall and delay, they can pretty credibly convince workers at other facilities to stay on the sidelines and see how things shake out in Staten Island.

At Starbucks, the floodgates are already open.

This stalling at the bargaining table has significantly slowed down organizing for workers at Starbucks, who have showed some of the most exciting union organizing activity last year.

Last summer, workers at Starbucks saw a major wave of union election wins. Last year workers at 218 Starbucks stores won union elections involving over 5,700 workers. And over time momentum for organizing grew. Union election activity peaked in June when workers at 61 stores won union elections involving more than 1,600 workers.

But for Starbucks workers, winning the election was easy, getting a contract is that hard part. At the bargaining table, Starbucks has engaged in an aggressive pattern of illegally stalling contract talks. Unfortunately, even though the company’s behavior has been documentably and egregiously unlawful, the remedies for violating the National Labor Relations Act are painfully inadequate. The most the NLRB can do is slap the company on the wrist, forcing them to post a notice admitting that they broke the law, promising not to do it again, and giving workers instructions on how to vote out their newly formed union.

And it has clearly slowed momentum in the organizing process. After peaking in June union, union organizing momentum at new Starbucks stores dropped off precipitously. Workers are still joining the union in exciting numbers, but it’s unlikely that we’ll see another big wave of activity until workers at non-union stores see material improvements among their unionized coworkers.

Looking forward to 2023

In many ways prospects for continuing this wave of union organizing into 2023 will hinge on whether or not workers who recently won union elections are able to achieve first contracts. Worker leaders and the unions that are supporting them at Amazon and Starbucks are running incredibly smart campaigns to pressure their employers in the marketplace and at the bargaining table.

And because it’s clear that the outcome of these organizing drives will ripple through the movement landscape and the economy as a whole, they’re asking for support from community and movement organizations in their campaigns. In the coming weeks and months we should be on the lookout for opportunities for our organizations to lean in to these fights and support these workers. They are truly at the tip of the spear at a make-or-break moment for the movement for workers’ rights in this country.

An Aside… the PRO Act

We’ll dig much deeper into this in a future edition of On the Horizon, but there is a legislative fix that could dramatically transform the organizing landscape, and Amazon and Starbucks are perfect examples of why labor law reform is so urgently needed.

The Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act is a critical piece of legislation that would hold employers accountable when they violate workers’ rights, ensure that most workers are covered under the National Labor Relations Act, remove barriers to unionization, and, most importantly in the case of Amazon and Starbucks, adopt new procedures to make sure that unions can reach a first contract, requiring:

• Collective bargaining to begin within 10 days of the certified union’s request to do so.

• Mediation if no contract is reached within 90 days.

• Mandatory arbitration of a two-year contract if no contract is reached through mediation.

In the last Congress, the PRO Act passed the house with all but one Democrat and the support of five Republicans, but it stalled in the Senate in with Democrats Kyrsten Sinema and Mark Kelly of Arizona and Mark Warner of Virginia refusing to sign onto the legislation.

In the new Congress, the PRO Act will face an even steeper uphill climb, but in the coming months Amazon and Starbucks just might do an incredibly powerful job of illustrating why labor law reform is so critical in this moment.